Roblox Accused Of Allowing Sexual Exploitation In Four Separate Lawsuits
One law firm, Anapol Weiss, has filed four lawsuits alleging Roblox is responsible for the sexual exploitation of children on the platform.
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I'm not so sure about this, and I'm not paying to read the rest of the article.
I'm not saying that there aren't predators on Roblox, but is it Roblox's responsibility to teach kids not to talk to strangers?
The part I could read mentioned that they took the conversation to another platform before meeting. Is anyone suing THAT platform? If that's where they made the plans to meet, wouldn't they be more responsible?
I have no love for Roblox, but I don't think they caused this, unless there are other wild details I missed.
As a foster parent, we get trained on how kids frequently get trafficked and the number one place is anywhere parents feel their kids are safe and don't need close supervision. So anything kid centric like Disney World or family centric like a church are prime targets for predators. Roblox is a kid centric place where parents don't closely watch their kids.
Roblox is a big enough company and has been around long enough that they should be doing something. They should be doing something because they definitely know this happens at this point. If you believe everything they claim on their website is true: https://corp.roblox.com/resource/child-safety, they are doing something. As far as I can tell, there isn't a report or any way to validate they are actually doing anything. You just have to trust that the publicly traded company is investing in a department that doesn't directly generate profits for its stock holders. You have to trust this company is not giving in to pressure each quarter to increase profits and decrease costs around this function of their business.
I push back on the idea that if something is designed for kids it doesn't need to be safe for kids. Roblox has designed something for kids, they should do something to make it safe for kids, and parents should watch their kids.
I dunno. I think as a platform that heavily markets to kids, they have a responsibility to ensure that those kids aren't preyed upon on their platform. If you took a child to a live action Bluey play, you'd be expected to keep an eye on your child, but you'd also have a reasonable expectation that the event holders have taken some measures as hosts to keep the kids safe from a variety of hazards including suspicious adults.
I agree completely.
Did Roblox do anything "unreasonably unsafe?"
If they were selling a monthly PedoPass that gave someone access to the names and addresses of underage members, of course we should shut that shit down, but nearly every other online game has chat options. What makes Roblox less safe than those?
Roblox chat is so restrictive that it routinely makes it difficult to talk about normal things. My daughter has spent a ton of time on Roblox (while being prohibited from many other things including unfettered YouTube, for context) and I really don't see what the fuss is about. I've played with her on and off for years, it has always struck me as a generally safe platform, and I'm both sensitive and clued in about the topic.
Anything with user numbers like Roblox is going to attract the darkest corners of the internet, that's unavoidable. It doesn't strike me that there's anything particularly dangerous about Roblox beyond that fact, they seem to manage it well and actually the platform seems pretty safe all things considered.
I think a lot of the hate is coming from people who don't understand Roblox. It's just this weird new thing that kids are playing. They said the same kind of things about my Mortal Kombat, D&D, and Magic:tG.
I certainly have my complaints on Roblox, mainly the concept of Robucks and how the community members design games to milk children for their birthday money.
You're probably right, I've once or twice (from an older account) asked a user to elaborate or give specifics, after they'd made some wild claims about safety, never gotten anything.
I do know of at least one truly hideous group of people using the platform as communication and recruitment to some really horrendous (life ruining) stuff, maybe this article references that too. But again, that's a problem of sufficiently large user bases (especially of kids). Among millions of users it's mathematically not realistic to prevent every possible group in the size of dozens from congregating to attempt their awful shit. Motivated humans are good at overcoming even well-designed systems.
We're certainly right to care about safety though, and I do want to know if Roblox is less safe than I imagine.
Oh, also - largely with you on Robux. I mean I don't have a problem with it in principle, ideally it lets kids (through their parents) effectively choose which games and creators to support, and there have lately been some big games with big frequent updates that kids have found to be super enjoyable. Like, content updates at rates traditional games would be embarrassed by.
But like all things involving $, I'm sure there's lots of eventual exploitation. And manipulation of kids to want to buy is definitely bad. But then again, by my measure, kids need to be instructed on recognizing and resisting precisely that from a young age. That manipulation is everywhere and getting worse all the time.
I think there's a scenario where they had sufficient enough measures in place, but I guess that will be shown through the lawsuit.